JACKSONVILLE BEACH, Fla. — “I know exactly what you’re talking about.”
With those words, Melissa Jo Schafer unburdened herself of a 20-year secret – the cold case murder of a Jacksonville convenience store owner.
Schafer was interrogated by Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office detectives in July 2020, confessing to her role in the 1999 stabbing death of Saad Kawaf.
In the confession, obtained exclusively by First Coast News, she tearfully tells detectives, “I’m just glad it’s over.”
At the time of the murder, she was married to Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office Detective William “Billy” Baer. She said Baer promised her the crime would be a simple robbery. “He had said that we needed to get money and he knew a way for us to go ahead, and it would be really easy to do.”
It was not easy.
The home invasion turned fatal when Kawaf was unexpectedly at home. The two men began to fight and Baer stabbed Kawaf to death.
Schafer tussled with his wife, who fought back fiercely, leaving Schafer with a lifelong half-moon bite scar on her upper arm.
The pair eventually stole the couple’s money – Schafer said about $53,000 – and left the wife duct taped to a chair.
In her confession, Schafer detailed the planning of the crime, which included Baer printing fake real estate business cards so they could access the gated Deerwood community where Kawaf lived.
She told detectives she carried a roll of duct tape inside a purse – nothing else – and that Baer swapped out their truck’s license plate with a stranger's the night before their crime. She said Baer sold the vehicle in Tampa within days. He warned her not to tell anyone, ever.
"He said I'd go to jail and I'd lose my kids."
“You have no idea,” she told detectives. “I haven’t been able to tell this my whole life. I couldn’t even tell my mom before she died.”
Baer previously pleaded guilty to first-degree murder as well and was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
On Friday, Shafer also was sentenced to 30 years. Despite her confession, the judge noted she’d had two decades to come clean and had not.
“I could have come forward and said this is what happened, and this was my role in it," she told detectives. "And I did not.”
